The new subway map lines also work on the mobile version of Google Maps. Google notes that they provide transit directions for 436 transit agencies around the world.

While the subway lines on the map are nice, nothing beats the Swiss Rail mashup that shows the trains in real-time and they actually move on the map!

Featured Job:

• Web Designer at Investor’s Business Daily

More Jobs:

• Product Support Manager at Patch
• Experience Lead at HUGE
• Interaction Designer at GravityTank
• Front End Web Developer at Gucci
• Executive/Senior Web Producer at Scholastic

Employers – Join other top companies on the CN Job Board. Post your jobs today – only $10!

CityFlitz tried a more involved business model than ZipCar employs. CityFlitz wrapped each of their cars with advertising and then only charged members $1/day to use the car (gas not included). ZipCar has a maximum mileage per rental period while CityFlitz wants you to drive as much as possible so that the advertisements are seen around town. If you drive less than 30km per day with CityFlitz, you are charged a penalty. CityFlitz cars also come with WiFi inside the car which is pretty neat.

We received a couple of emails today about CityFlitz and that their domain name is no longer functional. When we load CityFlitz.com, we are redirected to what appears to be a web hosting provider. I’ve tried to email the company but so far no response. If I receive a response, I will update this post. In my initial review I wondered if the company would be able to sign enough advertisers to support the cars as a going concern.

In July, Esteban reported that CityFlitz was expanding to Montreal. He also noted that advertisers were paying $7,000 a month on average for advertising on the fleet of cars.

One member left a comment on our initial post noting that CityFlitz charged a security deposit of $350 (unsure if it’s CAD or USD) and the member has been unable to receive a refund. There are two additional comments on the CityFlitz Facebook page also regarding the security deposit. You can read the full terms using the Google Cache. Let’s hope this is just a temporary issue.

I like the concept that CityFlitz used and maybe the way to make it work is to charge a minimum fee for the car rentals that equals the bottom-line cost and use the advertising as the profit. I might be willing to drive around in a advertising wrapped ZipCar if I received enough of a discount to make it worthwhile.

• How to Boost Ad Revenue: Speed is Your Secret Weapon – BuySellAds
• Drop.io Outlook Plugin Release – Drop.io
• I’m starting out in Email Marketing. Should I buy an email list? - Toddle
• Alice makes it even easier to find the best price – Alice
• Dropbox is to Ubuntu as eucalyptus is to koalas - Dropbox

It is amazing to read story after story about a blog that has broken an embargo or an agreed-to timed post because of “a problem with the clock in Wordpress.” I am not going to name any names because sadly the list would be pretty long. We’ve seen some bloggers make one mistake and use the “Wordpress” excuse while others have used the same excuse for nearly a week of “early” postings.

So bloggers…come really close to your monitor…I am going to teach you the secret, free of charge to make sure that your timed posts never go live ahead of time.

Most of the larger blogs have multiple team members and people working in multiple time zones. There is absolutely no excuse for pre-posting before the agreed to time, period. Some might say that a story is placed into the content management system so that it can be edited by the team. I say hogwash – use Google Docs or Zoho, etc. to edit the story. This is actually preferred as it’s easier to see the edits by each team member or blog editor.

If you are a single blog author or don’t have a teenager working for you, then stay awake to make the post live manually at the specified time. Unlike the financial documents I noted above, most tech news story embargoes are issued at a reasonable time.

Bottom line – never use CMS timed posts when an agreement is in place. See how simple that is? Remember, trust is earned.

And then ya’all can stop blaming Wordpress.

Judging from the length of the line, as shown in the video below, the online advertising industry must be out of the recession and ready for major growth. Either that or there was no plan for how to handle that most conference attendees would want to, you know, actually enter the conference. Now that I think about it and listening to people on the line, it is definitely the latter. There are actually two lines like the one in the video below. As of Noon today, the line appeared to be at least 75 minutes long. Lots of people seemed pissed that they paid anywhere from $35-$1,800 and had to wait for their badge. I assume by this afternoon they will have this registration issue resolved. Let’s hope that the Web 2.0 check-in process will be smoother later this month.

If you decide to watch the video, please note that there is a lot of camera shake.

• Microsoft calls Zoho the “Fake Office”, so does that mean Bing is … – Zoho
• Productive at 36,000 feet - Saas 2.0
• Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death? – Inc
• Lessons from Rackspace’s downtime – Jacob Kaplan-Moss
• What I Used To Know Isn’t Good Enough - dy/dan
• Job of the day: Web Designer at Investor’s Business Daily

Important message for T-Mobile customers

Some T-Mobile customers may be experiencing intermittent service disruptions impacting calls and messages.

Our rapid response teams have been mobilized to restore service as quickly as possible.

There is a thread on the T-Mobile support forums noting, “Issues began at approximately 5:30 p.m. Eastern time.”  The forums say that it could take as long as 24 hours to get service restored.

Update: T-Mobile says that all service has been restored. You may now continue making your calls and telling the world on twitter that you had a turkey sandwich for dinner.

Additional coverage on Gizmodo and MocoNews notes that 5% of T-Mobile customers are affected.  Please leave a comment if you are using T-Mobile and your service is currently in service or is down.

• Announcing the Webs App Store – Webs
• Selling Ad Space: Tips from Top Design Blog Owners via Line25.com – BuySellAds
• MobBase: Drag and Drop iPhone App Maker for Bands – Readwriteweb
• The view from our new digs – iPling
• New tracking code format; please update your site if possible – Clicky
• Why I do Time Tracking – Swaroop CH
• Job of the day: Senior PHP Developer 86539 at GoDaddy.com

• How to Be Productive In Spite Of Monday Morning – task.fm
• The new TechVI is live – TechVI
• I’m not selling – RSS2Twitter
• Make Testing Your Online Advertising Easy and Effective – Startup Your Online Advertising
• The Blurry Picture of Open APIs, Standards, Data Ownership – Louis Gray
• Making the Shortest Path Even Quicker – Microsoft
• Paypal X Innovate – Stay ‘n Alive

The bus locator service is available via the addition of GPS transmission devices placed on their buses. Currently you need to call NY Waterway to find out when the next bus will arrive although the company says that mobile apps are coming soon. Not sure why you would launch without a way to get the information automatically via your computer or mobile device.

Earlier this year the NYC MTA launched a test of a bus locator service on several crosstown bus routes. Many other cities already have displays with a list of times until the next bus arrives. While I am not a fan of this functionality underground (there is never a long wait), I am a big fan of this technology for the bus fleet. The countdown timers can give you a quick indication if you should walk or take a cab.

• Exit Strategy releases version 2 of their subway iPhone app and announces deal with the MTA – Exit Strategy
• Use the Doodle Gadget everywhere – Doodle
• Clicky API v4 released – Clicky
• Volkswagen’s Fun and Apple’s Attack Dominate The Top 10 Viral Video Ads Chart – Visible Measures
• Turn a user into a passionate customer *before* making them sign up for your service – Sachin
• Why Analytics Is an Essential Aid in Improving your websites ROI – Lancore

• 1-2-3 Punch of Display Advertising – Dapper
• Announcing Tonido Relay Service – Tonido
• Tatango has a lot of free time apparently – Tatango
• Reasons Google Should Make a Car – Simpleleap
• Echo adds social likes – Echo

My contract with Sprint is coming to an end soon and I am considering what my next mobile device might be. I haven’t had much time to read any reviews of the latest devices. I do see a ton of advertising on television for three specific devices: Palm Pre (Sprint), Droid (Verizon), and the MyTouch3G (T-Mobile).  I’d like to share my thoughts about what I’ve learned about the three devices solely based on the television advertising. I have never used any of these devices.

Palm Pre

The commercials feature a woman who I guess is some sort of angel up in the clouds. She barely smiles while using the device and apparently she is considered “creepy” based on the number of creepy remixes on YouTube. One of the commercials shows the woman receiving an update from a friend – looked like a status update. Another video shows the woman clicking a button which will alert her meeting attendees that she is running late. I wonder how many networks support this functionality. More importantly…are these the best two features of the device? The Palm Pre supports apps like the iPhone – why not show some of these off? Here’s the commercial with the woman showing off the late calendar notification:

Droid

This is my favorite ad of the three mobile devices. It scares me. When the commercial transitions to the Robotron voice, I get it. The Droid is everything the iPhone isn’t. Simple and makes the point clear. I’d like to see some images of the Droid device in the ad itself but even without it, I get it. I will need to read some reviews of this device — looks like the reviews hit the gadget blogs today. Here’s the commercial:

MyTouch3G

This is the worst ad of the three – and that’s saying a lot considering that the Palm Pre commercial is pretty crappy. I have an idea – let’s bring together some F-level celebs and show off how they can “customize” a phone. At least I think that is what they are doing. Trust me, I have no desire to own the phone that Whoopi Goldberg does – I remember her from her Web 1.0 pimping days. We know it plays videos, shows photos and makes pretty background images. And it has Google.

Conclusion

Droid, Pre, MyTouch3G in that order. I’d love to chat with the agency who created the MyTouch commercial. Commercials should get me excited to run out and spend money I don’t have for a new device. Only the Droid even remotely did that and I don’t even know what the device does besides support Android.

One of the reasons I am sharing these commercials is because it’s something I hope you think about with your startups. Last week I spoke to a startup here in NYC. Thirty-minutes into the call and I was more confused as to what service they provide than before the call began. Keep it simple and make sure that the customer “gets it”. And that they get so excited about it that they want it before it’s even ready.

I will leave the “these devices will never take down the iPhone” conversation for another day. As much as we can crap on Apple, their iPhone commercials are very solid and so simple. They show the device and what you can do with it. The apps, the maps, etc. Sometimes the simplest concepts are the ones that win.

• Ideas To Go announces collaboration with Harris Interactive – Ideas To Go
• ClickTale and Contactology team up to deliver Post-Click Analytics within email campaigns – ClickTale
• TripIt Pro Now Available Worldwide – TripIt
• Announcing the Zoho Projects API – Zoho
• More Telenor operators choose Momail – Momail
• The Lijit Ad Network is Open for Business! – Lijit
• Email Is Still The Killer App – NutshellMail